The Maple Brief

An alternative guide to Canada

Most Canadian sports involve ice, the outdoors, or both. I have noticed that for a country so in love with sport though, it's the kids who actually do it the most. The adults seem to spend more time watching it on TV (but maybe that's just because it's winter - although if all your sports involve ice...anyway). Here is a guide to that weird and wonderful world...

Ice Hockey

The obvious one, and my personal favourite having played it myself. There's really nothing like slamming someone into the boards (ie the edge of the rink) at 30 miles an hour, purely to get hold of a burger-sized piece of plastic. The rules of professional hockey are as follows: beat the crap out of each other for three 15-minute intervals until the ice turns red. The winning team is the one that's still conscious. Excellent.

Lacrosse

Before I played this as a teenager, I had pictures of genteel boarding-school girls prancing down the pitch with their nets held high, suffering nothing nastier than a sprained ankle. Now I know different. Lacrosse is standing in the rain in your netball skirt, trying to protect your shins from Tamsyn Parris or some other psycho. Professional lacrosse is so bad they have to wear 20 pounds of Kevlar body armour. And they still beat the crap out of each other.

Curling

This is the bowls of winter sports, and about as interesting. It involves a guy pushing a 10-kilo weight (which bears a bizarre resemblance to the Starship Enterprise) along some ice so it reaches a certain spot. Then other players use their starships to push the first starship out of the way. The really funny part is the people who run in front of the starship trying to smooth the ice so it goes further - it looks like they're sweeping up or something. Weird.

Snowboarding

This is to skiing what surfing is to yachting. As a skiier, I confess I'm a bit snobby about it. Sorry, but there are far too many snowboarders who use the words 'dude' and 'rush' for it to be a serious sport. And they seem to spend most of the time trying to pump as much as they can out of their adrenal glands, like adrenalin is a valuable commodity or something. When James Bond starts snowboarding away from the enemy, then I'll begin to believe there's a bit of style to it.

Lumberjacking

Yes, this is actually a sport - I saw it on TV earlier today ('The Lumberjack Challenge'!). It's hilarious to watch - events include the Axe Throw, the Modified Chainsaw, whittling something into a totem pole in the shortest time possible, and sawing trees with that two-man saw that's the source of constant humour in Bugs Bunny cartoons. The participants all wear vests and look like Desperate Dan. Highly recommended viewing.